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PHRENOLOGY. BY DAVID UWINS. M.D. 

The writer of the following remarks presents them with his name, rather than 
with a feigned signature, in order that the responsibility, both for matter and 
manner, may rest entirely with himself. The reader, then, will be pleased to 
consider this paper as in no measure implicating the Editor's sentiments, but 
merely as a frank avowal on the part of the writer of his own individual opinions 
on a debatable point. Dr. U. would be glad to see an opposition paper pro- 
voked by the present; and he has no doubt that the Editors of the Magazine, 
although he believes they are not desirous to make their pages the arena of con- 
troversy, would readily act on the equitable principle of " audi alteram partem." 

Phrenology, from $pev, Mind, and Xoyo?, rationale, or science of. However 
disreputable the announcement may prove, I nevertheless fearlessly make it, that 
philosophers have been at work some thousands of years in researches respecting 
Mind, without having gained the smallest ground in the way of advance. Plenty, 
indeed, of rattle and bustle, and seeming of business, have been brought to bear 
on the inquiry; but all this hurly-burly has begun and ended, like the rattle 
and whirl of the squirrel in his round-about prison, by bringing the agitator and 
the agitated precisely to the same point, again and again, and again, from which the 
primary start was made. From Plato to Priestley it has all been one and the same 
thing. The proud Athens of former times, and the equally presumptuous Athens 
of the present times, stand upon exactly the same unsound eminence ; and while 
in other departments of philosophical pursuit, something real and tangible has 
been gained, a mere change in terminology constitutes the sum and substance 
of what has been named Mental Philosophy. 

And why is ail this so? It is because false analogies have been assumed as 
real resemblances — because final have been confounded with efficient causes — 
because spirit and matter have been considered absolute essences, instead of 
merely terms of convenience ; and finally, and more especially, as more parti- 
cularly applicable to the purposes of the present paper — because workmen have 
essayed to work without materials. In the same spirit as the idolaters of old, 
they have instituted abstractions from the coinage of their own brains, and then, 
having embodied these abstractions, they have fallen down and worshipped 
them. 

Even they who have seemed somewhat nearer to the true track of their game, 
have, if possible, receded farther from it, by pacing the path of truth in a wrono- 
direction. Like the man who tumbled from a stage-coach, and recovering his 
legs, made use of them, by rapidly running in a direction opposite to that in which 
the vehicle was travelling. Like him, these metaphysical physiologists, who 
thought it necessary to take into account that there are such things as brain 
and nerves, when they have reasoned on the thinking principle, have gone back- 
ward, instead of forward ; or rather, perhaps, we might say, have reasoned up 
to, instead of down from, the organs of perception and intellect. They first con- 
ceived vaguely of a soul, and then placed this same soul in combination with the 
material fabric by lodging it on the pineal gland, or some other part of the en- 
cephalon, as shall have best suited and served the whim of the moment. 

" To all" (theories of Mind), says the acute and learned Dugald Stewart, " I 
apprehend the following remarks will be found applicable. First, that in the 
formation of them, their authors have been influenced by some general maxims 
of philosophy borrowed from physics ; and, secondly, they have been influenced 
by an indistinct, but deep-rooted conviction, of the immateriality of the soul, 
which, although not precise enough to point out to them the absurdity of at- 
tempting to illustrate its operations by the analogies of matter, was yet suffi- 
ciently strong to induce them to keep the absurdities of their theories as far as 
possible out of view, by allusion to those physical facts in which the distinguish- 
ing properties of matter are the least grossly and palpably exposed to our 
observation." 

This is exceedingly just, and admirably stated ; not that some of our modem 




\ 

41G Phre)iology. 

physiologists have been very nice and fearful in thus keeping their notions, 
drawn from facts in the material universe, as much as might be in the back- 
ground — one of them comparing ideas to configurations of the organs of sense, 
while another tells you that thought is secreted from the brain, as bile is 
by the liver. But I imagine that bile laid up in the folds of the liver for some 
sixty or seventy years, would not prove very subservient to the offices which this 
secretion is destined to serve in the animal economy; while we are all very 
familiar with the fact that particulars of very early perception are particulars of 
very late recognition, so that in the very last stages of this our " eventful being," 
circumstances recur to the mind which had been obliterated, or lain latent, dur- 
ing the whole period of intellectual maturity and mental vigour. Thought, a 
secretion indeed ! you may just as well tell me that life is oxygen, and that the 
breathings and burnings of poetry are the smoke and stir of a Margate steamer, 
bearing its cockney freight to its cockney destination. 

In a word, Materialists and Immaterialists, Organists and Spiritualists, have 
been all along aiming to grasp shadows, and localize " airy nothings : w they 
have waged warfare with one another, having nothing to combat for or against ; 
and one Sancho-Panzayan expression, accidentally dropped from a half-witted 
sceptic, has not seldom availed in showing up these dreamers and system-mon- 
gers in all their nakedness and nullity. Metaphysics ! why it is a word possess- 
ing no signification whatever ; or at least, if it mean any thing, it means a tissue 
of conjectures and extravagancies; these conjectures being so tortured into un- 
natural alliances with absolute truth and legitimate science, as to make the resem- 
blance of reality, when probed to the bottom, more conspicuously ridiculous 
than had no such union been attempted. What has been said with equivocal 
propriety in respect of Medicine, is ^-equivocally applicable to Metaphysics — 
viz. that a mixture of right and wrong is worse than all error. 

While writing these desultory strictures, the first line of the inscription which 
Dante places on the portal of the infernal regions presents itself to my mind, as 
applicable, by the change of a word, to all metaphysical initiation. On the 
doors of every temple devoted to the cultivation of mental philosophy, might be 
inscribed — 

" Per me si va nella Citta" — (d'errori.) 

And from the same inscription might be selected, with still more appropriate 
force, its concluding line, of dreadful import — 

" Lasciate ogni speranza, O voi, che intrate." 

That is, all hope of having your desires satisfied, or your queries resolved. 
" Now, if you please, you may walk back again," did a practical joker once write 
at the end of a long avenue which had no thoroughfare, for the additional morti- 
fication of those who thus found themselves shut out from further proceeding ; 
and so it may be written or said at the cul de sac (blind) termination of metaphy- 
sical windings ; glad enough, indeed, ought we to feel in being able to get out, by 
any means, from these dangerous and delusory paths, before the old giant De- 
spair pounces upon us for permanent inhabitants of his Doubting Castle. 

But " Io ! triumphe ! " say a certain set of new-light philosophers, who call 
themselves,par excellence, Phrenologists. All indeed has been, hitherto, darkness 
and error; but now — as old John Brown, in his masterly style, expressed him- 
self — now, " veluti viatori, ignota regione, perditis viae vestigiis, in umbra noctis 
erranti, perobscura qusedam, quasi prima diurna, lux demum adjulsit" 

Sufficiently presumptuous, at any rate, my reader will say, is all this preten- 
sion ; but our new masters in Psychology not only presume, but persevere. 
" Edinburgh Reviewers," they exclaim, " may dart down upon us with their fee- 
ble flippancy; Quarterly critics may dole and twaddle with eoc-ojficio wrath and 
inanity. The proud may feel humbled, the fearful appalled, but we advance, 
nothing daunted ; and advance we must and will, so long as there be any power 
in truth to push aside its semblance and its opposite; and amidst darkness, 
doubt, and difficulty, eventually to work its way into life, and liberty, and 
light!" 



Phrenology. 447 

Pretensions like these, supported by persons who have a little something more 
to recommend them than " pea-green coats" and German extravagances, demand 
an investigation as to their legitimacy; be it, then, our endeavour, on the pre- 
sent occasion, to investigate the validity of phrenological assumption ; or, in 
other words, to ascertain whether the new lights are false lights, tempting us 
over swamps and deserts, and terminating in nothing better; or whether they 
fulfil their engagement of diverting our course from the dreariness and restless- 
ness of error, into the solace and comfort of satisfaction and peace. 

It has already been said that the Phrenologists found the speculative world in 
a sad condition, and a preliminary sentence or two in advocacy of this assump- 
tion may not be here out of place. First, then, of Father Plato, with his tri- 
coloured notions of the human soul ; this being, according to him, a compound 
of intelligence, of passion, and appetite. But how these principles formed them- 
selves into combination seems to puzzle our philosopher extremely; he talks in 
one place of intelligence being derived from the Deity, and of passion, or appe- 
tite, from matter ! And in another part of his writings, he makes it a question 
whether we possess sense and understanding by the blood (which fluid, by the 
way, so late as John Hunter, is vaguely spoken of as the residence of life), or 
whether fire or air be the source of mental phenomena — " Uorepov to alux la-rtv & 

(ppovoujuev, y\ o crip, r\ to Tivp. 

Then comes Aristotle, who compares ideas with impressions received by wax 
from a seal; and in this reference or symbolic representation, is to be traced the 
essence of all those fanciful vagaries founded on the postulate., that it is in our 
power to compare thought and intelligence with any thing else. Phantasms is a 
name given to objects of memory, or rather to its processes — and phantasms have 
indeed proved all attempts to unfold the secrets of life by these analogical assum- 
ings — should I not write amusings? We ridicule the conceits of the school- 
men, and speak of them as proofs of the exceeding absurdity to which philoso- 
phizing may be carried, when dialectic ingenuity, rather than useful truths, 
becomes the object of the disputant; but, to my mind, the celebrated theorem, 
which one of them proposed for solution, conveys as fine a satire as can well be 
conceived of Aristotelian phasmagoria. The question is this — " How many 
angels or devils/' (I forget which— -falling angels we should suppose some of 
them to be) " might dance on a needle's point, without interfering with each 
other's evolutions ? " One and all of the systems (and I need not go further 
into them) may be characterized by one and the same term. The shadows of 
Plato, the phantasms of Aristotle, the innate ideas of Descartes — nay, the picto- 
rial notions of Locke himself, are all so many contrivances to evade the charge 
of ignorance, or so many schemes to illustrate the laws of perception by allusion 
to material resemblances, and are, therefore, so many systems to which the ad- 
jective fallacious may be appended, as marking their essence, their origin, and 
their end. 

But what, I am asked, do you say of the Scotch philosophy, or the metaphy- 
sics of common sense, as it has been antithetically called? I reply, this is so 
far good as it rejects ideal representation and symbolic exposition ; but that it is 
objectionable, inasmuch as it travels abroad in search of faculties, instead of ob- 
serving and reasoning upon faculties already found. 

When Reid and Stewart discourse on perception, and conception, and abs- 
traction, and association, and memory, and imagination, they manifestly over- 
look individual peculiarity and circumstance; they are guilty of the same faults 
as the Nosologists, who endeavour to define and arrange disease : as if disease 
were something abstract, or distinct from the person affected ; or as if morbid 
condition, in its wide range among individuals, retained the same external fea- 
tures and actual identity as do the objects of natural history. But who is there 
that may not have remarked the various kinds, as well as measure of faculty, 
possessed by two persons, each of whom is gifted with the same measure of ge- 
neral power? " How is it," said Gall to a companion (before he thought of 
Phrenology), " how is it that you contrive to find your way through woods, and 
lanes, and turnings, where you have only once before been?" — " How is it," 



/ 



448 Phrenology. 

replied his companion, with equal surprise, "that you contrive not to find 
yours \ n 

The gifted mind of Dugald Stewart did, in truth, feel the difficulty, arising 
from the source to which I now refer ; and long prior to my knowing any thing 
about Gall or Spurzheim, I recollect being struck with the unsuccessful ingenuity 
by which the able Professor just mentioned endeavours to meet this formidable 
obstacle to his general-faculty scheme. Stewart quotes the celebrated Mon- 
taigne, who confesses that he can do nothing without his memorandum-book ; 
" And so great is my difficulty," says he, " in remembering proper names/' (I 
remember receiving comfort from this confession) " that I am forced to call my 
domestic servants by their offices. I am ignorant of the greater part of our coins 
in use — of the difference of one grain from another — what use leaven is in mak- 
ing bread, and why wine must stand in the vat some time before it ferments." 
" Yet the same author," adds Professor S. " appears evidently to have had his 
memory stored with an infinite variety of apothegms, and of historical passages 
which had struck his imagination ;" (ay, " there's the rub ! " Ms imagination ;) 
" and to have been familiarly acquainted, not only with the names, but with the 
absurd and exploded opinions of ancient philosophers; with the ideas of Plato; 
the atoms of Epicurus ; the plenum and vacuum of Leucippus and Democritus ; 
the water of Thales ; the numbers of Pythagoras ; the infinite of Parmenides, 
and the unity of Musaeus, In complaining, too, of his want of presence of mind, 
he indirectly acknowledges a degree of memory/' (pardon me, Mr. Stewart, 
when I say the acknowledgement only goes to kind, not degree,) " which, if it 
had been judiciously employed, would have been more than sufficient for the 
acquisition of all the common branches of knowledge, in which he appears to 
have been deficient." — " When I have an oration to speak, of any considerable 
length, I am," he says, " reduced to the miserable necessity of getting it, word 
for word, by heart/' while others, he might have added, vastly my inferiors in 
what would be termed capacity, or mind, or intellect, will rattle and ramble on 
with their wordy nothings, and probably deem me a dull man, in proportion to 
my deficiency in this their copia verborum. 

The men of the Faculty-school will tell you that Montaigne would have re- 
collected with ease the particulars announced, had he chosen to pay attention to 
them. But the attention is proportioned to the capacity, and the capacity to the 
con amore feeling. I have just laid down a volume of Fuseli's life, in which, I 
find, he remarks of himself that the Angel Gabriel would have failed in attempts 
to teach him mathematics. Another reads Milton, or gazes upon Claude, with 
indifference, inquiring " What does it all prove ? " Ah, but this last, you say, 
is a fool ! But will his geometrical master join you in the decision ? You 
will still retort, 6C want of taste or desire does not imply want of skill." Let me, 
then, tell you that there is, or till very lately was, an eminent literary character 
in the University of Oxford, who has, again and again, tried to solve Euclid's 
problems, and to play a rubber at whist with his friends in the evening, and has, 
again and again, given up the task in despair. 

In mere sensual perception, moreover, how great is the diversity in kind of 
power. A prelate, who is but recently dead, and who was marked by the gene- 
ral acuteness in his perceptions, was so utterly incapable of distinguishing co- 
lours, that it constituted one of the pastimes of his children to place before him 
green, which he would call yellow; blue, green; and so on. 

To these varieties, may we not also add the more ordinary ones of temper and 
disposition? One child from birth is the wolf, the other the lamb of the nursery. 
This shall delight, from the dawn of existence, in malevolence — that in benevo- 
lence. Now, neither Locke's blank-paper hypothesis, nor the fundamental 
faculty-scheme of Eeid, affords the smallest clue to these discrepancies ; so far, 
in fact, are they from being explained by, that they are in absolute discordance 
with, all the notions of Mind which have yet been broached. Where, then, are 
we to look for the source of these discrepancies, for the explication of these mar- 
vels ? If I answer, into the organic fabric, I am assailed immediately by the 
unmeaning missiles of materialism, necessity, fatalism, and so forth. I am ac- 



Phrenology. 449 

cused of attempting to destroy all the barriers that have been raised between 
Virtue and Vice — I am denounced as the denier of man's responsibility. 

Hard accusations are easily made, and it is sometimes sufficiently hard to bear 
them ; but I can assure my accuser in the present case, that so far from feeling the 
slightest resentment at his righteous indignation, I honour and applaud him for 
it. A word or two will soon be dropped in reply to these allegations : but, in 
the first place, it is proper to state upon what grounds the Phrenologist con- 
cludes that " the hum-drum faculties of perception, memory, imagination, with 
taste and judgment into the bargain, must be all turned adrift," before right in- 
ferences may be made as to the principles and rationale of mental phenomena 
and power.* 

So early as when only nine years old, was Dr. Gall led to observe the great 
difference between himself and a schoolfellow, in respect of faculties or powers : 
one thing, as already intimated, being easy to one, while another was easy to 
the other. In memory of words, was Gall's companion provokingly his supe- 
rior ; and this faculty he found, afterwards, to be common to several boys, who 
by no means ranked high as talented youths. These ready rememberers, Gall 
remarked, had prominent eyes ; and from this single observation did our young 
physiologist commence and pursue his observations on external form, as charac- 
terizing internal power, till he at length, in the true inductive method of research, 
came to the following inference : That the brain consists of distinct parts, each 
part being an organ or medium of some innate faculty ; and that it is possible 
to ascertain during life the relative magnitude and activity of these organs, by 
comparing character with marks or indices on the exterior of the skull. He 
came to the farther inference, that " the faculties of the Metaphysicians are 
mere varieties, common to the action of each faculty;' 7 and he considers that the 
totality of mental power displayed by an individual consists in a combination of 
the several innate faculties, acting and re-acting, balancing, or opposing each 
other. 

It was, of course, to be expected that such a system as this, which sets at 
nought all the fine-drawn speculations of former philosophers, would bring down 
upon itself a host of angry assailants. The engines of ridicule would be imme- 
diately set going, to crush this moral enemy. Argument would commence its 
more legitimate employ; and it would have to meet the charge of Materialism in 
all its varied shapes. " What ! the alents — nay, the virtues of man, dependent 
upon a piece of brain more in one part, and less in another ? Surely, then, we 
must be the easy victims of every excitant that shall accidentally cross our path, 
and prove suitable to our organization ? Why, bloodthirstiness is, upon this show- 
ing, nothing more or less than width of brain; mildness or gentleness is merely a 
certain conformation of the organ of Mind ; Virtue is cerebrum — Vice is cere- 
bellum!" 

Now wit is well enough in its place : argument may be occasionally assisted 
by ad absurdum assumptions ; and even ridicule may be lawfully employed in 
some cases of obvious nonsense, such as Fancourtism, Unknown Tongues, and 
the magnetic influence upon the animal frame ; but when a scheme of phi- 
losophy is laid open in all the nakedness of bare fact to the sober judgment of 
thinking man, it is manifestly the duty of those to whom the appeal is made to 
investigate the claimant's statements, uninfluenced by prejudice and un- 
trammelled by tenets. When, therefore, our readers find us dissecting and 
again putting together the materials of which phrenology is formed, let it not be 
thought that we are wanting in spirit because we are engaged in earnest; or 
that we could not bring to our aid plenty of sarcastic sneers and disgusting 



* Mr. Greville Jones, who is one of the ablest men I know, although he is no Phre- 
nologist, tells me that Kant is the man, if we did but take the pains to understand him ; 
and that his system is not only different and superior to all others, but that nothino- can 
possibly go farther. I know nothing of Kant myself, and were 1 to read him, I feel 
that 1 should not be likely to re-cant. 

May.— VOL. XXXIV. NO. CXXXVII. 2 H 



450 Phrenology. 

sophisms, did we think such rifling and trifling to be at all consistent with good 
principle, good taste, and good faith. 

The doctrine in question demands to be investigated craniognomically, era- 
nioscopicatly, physiologically, metaphysically, and in reference to its practical 
bearing ; for as it regards this last particular, all will not be ready to admit, 
when phrenology is the subject of discussion, that 

" Truth and good are one, 
And virtue dwells in them, 
And they in her, with like participation. ,, 

First, then, is it, or is it not fact, that men's characters can be inferred from 
the forms, and shapes, and sizes of their head ? Here 1 shall take the liberty of 
making an extract from an article in the " Foreign Quarterly," which, for real 
wit, and effective sarcasm, and brilliant imagery, beats its rival of the Edinburgh 
out and out : — 

" If," says Mr. Chevenix, the writer of the article, " the Edinburgh Reviewer has 
not been able to prevent the public attention from being directed to phrenology, and 
convinced by truth, still less has it been able to prevent the accumulation of facts ; and 
the fifteenth number of ' The Phrenological Journal' contains what, in a certain slang 
dialect, would be called such a plumper, that nothing softer than the Reviewer's fact- 
proof cranium could resist it, — Mr. Deville's visit to the convict-ship, England, bound 
with 148 prisoners for New South Wales. This zealous practitioner, after examining 
the convicts, gave a memorandum of the inferred character of each individual, and the 
manner in which the propensities of each were likely to manifest themselves. One 
man, in particular, Robert Hughes, was noted as most dangerous on account of his 
ferocity and dissimulation, (inferred). A mutiny, at the head of which was Hughes, 
was on the point of breaking out, and the conduct of every prisoner coincided most 
accurately with Deville's predictions. The records of the whole transaction are now 
officially at the Victualling- office. Mr. Deville was right in every instance but one ; 

and," continues Mr. C , " the man who does not admit that to be a science which 

only errs once in 148 cases, must have little experience of what human science is." 

Hundreds and thousands of similar correspondences have been traced by 
individuals who have set about the inquiry without prejudice or regard to con- 
sequences. But what may be considered as one of the most convincing facts in 
proof of facts is, that the most learned comparative anatomist in Europe insti- 
tuted a series of observations on animals craniologically, with a firm persuasion 
that he should prove the doctrine fallacious, and that this comparative investi- 
gation, which was probably never equalled, terminated in the conviction that 
the system was true which he had conceived to be groundless and fanciful. 

On the other hand, it must not be concealed, that men, whom we should sup- 
pose also to be without partiality or prejudice, have gainsay ed the facts as well 
as the principles of phrenology ; but so far as my observation has gone, I must 
confess that most, if not all, of the opposing inferences have been drawn either 
from viewing the science in some only of its bearings, mistaking its general 
scope and tendency, and employing observation as some seize hold of Scrip- 
tural expressions in order to justify their own particular creeds and professions. 
At any rate, we do not hear of anti-phrenological observations on so large a 
scale as hospitals, and prison-houses, and lunatic asylums. And in reference to 
these last, I have myself to state, that out of more than two hundred cases which 
are under my care, at Peckham Asylum, I selected from twenty to thirty for the 
observation of two gentlemen, who had given their minds to the inquiry, and 
that in all there was a remarkable coincidence in inference with what I knew 
from observation to be truth,* 

But allowing, it may be said, that exterior form may connect itself with cor- 
responding peculiarity Fin minds or dispositions of individuals, how can cra- 
nioscopy infer from this that the configuration extends to the brain, since the 
internal table, as it is anatomically named, of the cranium is not uniformly 

* It has been at the suggestion of one of these gentlemen, Mr. H. B. Burlowe, the 
Sculptor, that I have put together these crude remarks. 



Phrenology. 451 

parallel with the external ? Dr. Spurzheim answers this objection by showing 
that u the two tables are scarcely perceptible in children, and although they are 
distinct in adults, their distance from one another is not considerable. It is," he 
says, " also very essential not to confound the idea of size with that of protube- 
rance," a mistake, by the way, which many have unwittingly fallen into when 
making cranioscopical surveys. Phrenology has been too much considered as a 
mere M lump and bump" affair ; the totalities and qualifications which are 
admitted in all other branches of science, have either been refused, or not taken 
into account, in this. 

We must, however, hasten to the physiological circumstances which connect 
themselves with phrenological doctrine. And here the hasty opponent conceives 
that he is directly furnished with an irrefragable argument against the cranio- 
scopical creed. The cranium, he says, is a hard and bony mass ; the brain is a 
soft and pulpy one. Although, then, we may conceive that the skull should 
give shape to the brain, the contra cannot well be imagined. This objection, 
my good friend, would be urged in total ignorance of physiological laws : and 
here we are conducted to a very curious and very important part of the argu- 
ment. The brain and spinal marrow (the latter absurdly so called) are in 
immediate connexion, or rather communication. Now let it be understood, that 
the spinal chord, which appears to be, and has been thought a production or 
continuation of the brain, is, in point of fact, of anterior formation to that organ. 
And in embryo, the nervous substance is gradually, or by successive deposits, 
thrown out, much in the same way that osseous or bony matter takes place 
eventually of the cartilaginous membrane which precedes it: this nerve-mak- 
ing process in foetal existence, extends itself from below upwards, and pro- 
gressively swells out into brain of more or less magnitude or complication, 
according to the measure or degree of intellect to be developed after birth. Simul- 
taneously with this process, but much posterior to its commencement, is the 
bony case, produced from what is at first mere membrane, lying on the surface 
of the brain. As this organ (the brain) developes itself particle by particle, 
and now pushes itself out in this direction, now in that, so does the structure of 
the bony case proceed in regular and undeviating dependence ; and thus the 
skull becomes not the moulder of the brain, but the brain of it. But this is not 
all ; for after these matters are adjusted and settled, change is still going on in 
every part of the body, the brain included : — 

" The hand that now guides the pen," says a recent writer in ' The Eclectic Review,' 
" will not be the same hand when this article is finished as when it was begun. Two 
friends," he goes on to say, "shall separate, and after the lapse of some time meet 
again, when probably not one particle of the same material shall enter into the com- 
position of their bodies that formed the men at the moment of separation." 

This principle, then, of constant change, of incessant absorption and deposit, 
meets the most forcible objection that seems to arraign itself against phrenolo- 
gical belief: the most forcible objection, I say, because no one unacquainted 
with the agencies that regulate organization, would suppose that the shape of the 
head, even in adult life, is changed and moulded according to the use that the 
individual may be called on by circumstances, or incited by volition, to make 
in the way of cultivating this or that faculty, or indulging in this or that pro- 
pensity.* That the brain is thus susceptible of, nay, that it actually does 
undergo these metamorphoses, has been proved by a large series of obervations 
and inquiries directed to this very point. And let it be seriously taken to heart 
by the sensualist and the depraved, that his indulgence in vicious habits comes, 
at length, to be stamped upon his skull with a Cain-like mark of visible 
deformity. But of this a little more afterwards. 

I have just stated that the direction of brain developement is upwards. It is 

* I would not wish to be ungallant when I state that man's brain is averaged at two 
pounds more than the brain of the female. We must suppose what is wanting in quan- 
tity is made up in form and proper direction in the latter case. 

2h2 



$58 Phrenology. 

so, indeed, to such an extent, and after such sort, that the absolute terminations 
are all upon the superficies, which farther serves to obviate the objection, that 
onl\ a portion of the mass is susceptible of investigation upon phrenological 
principles : and, upon the whole, it appears to me, that the new organology has 
fully made good its assumption of innate faculties and particular powers, and 
that these faculties or powers are indicated by exterior conformation, having dis- 
tinct organic media, which abstractedly in part, but consentaneously and in com- 
bination more especially, show the animal, intellectual, and moral character 
naturally formed and artificially regulated. I farther think, that metaphysics, 
unbased on physiology, is a mere shadowy substitute for substantial science. 
The faculties, indeed, may be systematically classed into a scheme of totality, 
and reasoned on without reference to external indices. It should, however, be 
recollected, that you may as w T ell talk of vision without the eyes, of hearing 
without the ears, as discourse on a faculty abstracted from the organ which it 
has pleased the Author of Nature to make the medium of its manifestation, and 
which it behoves the looker into the laws of nature to study in the same spirit, 
and with the same intent that he examines the crystalline lens, unfolds the mem- 
branes of the eye, or traces the labyrinths of the ear. 

And now for the moral of the whole. (Yes, says my sceptical reader, fables 
require a moral.) What is the good of your science? Whither does it tend ? 
What does it prove? 

In the first place, I answer, that if it be true, it must be good ; good in its 
nature ; good in its bearings ; good in its tendencies ; and good in its results. 
Is the subversion both of positive and negative error not good ? If, as it has 
been asserted — and I see no reason to condemn, or even qualify the assertion — 
if, from the most ancient period, down to the present day, one philosopher has 
not made a single step farther than another in the precise knowledge of the true 
nature of man, his inclinations, and his talents, or of the source of his motives 
and determinations ; and if those philosophers who have taken the brain as their 
chart and compass, have at length found the path ; if they have not yet broken 
it all up to the intricacies of mind, they deserve well of their race, as having pre- 
sented to man the besom for sweeping away the rubbish of the schools, and the 
efficient means of never permitting it again to accumulate. But we have had 
enough of all this, you will say, in the commencement of your paper; fulfil now 
your ad rem promise; make it palpable to our still sceptical minds what actual, 
and practical, and individual benefit the phrenologists, with their imposition of 
hands, are capable of conferring on mankind. Let us farther hear what you 
have to reply to our allegations on the score of necessity, and fate, and material- 
ism, and then we will give you our opinion whether you have or have not been 
usefully employed in penning your present paper. 

Phrenology, I answer, supposing its principles to be well founded, is, in the 
first place, a decided improvement in physiological doctrine. The connexion of 
the nervous system with the brain had ever been a puzzling problem to the 
medical student; but now, a perspicuity attends upon this interesting portion of 
organic philosophy, to which it had before been a stranger. 

In the second place, pathology, or the doctrine of disease, may gather con- 
siderably from phrenological science. The phenomena of mental aberration 
do not seem at all explicable upon any other hypothesis than that of supposing 
separate organs in the brain all uniting into one harmonious totality, when the 
mind is in a sane condition, this harmony and relation being broken in upon by 
the several sources of insanity. The peculiarities of the dreaming state may be 
accounted for on the same assumption — (and what is madness but a continued 
dream ?) The excitation which cures lunacy, and which rouses the dreamer into 
complete wakefulness, may be supposed one that shall be equal to bring all the 
organs into absolute and regular power. 

Inconsistencies of character seem only explicable by the phrenological dog- 
mata. Who can contemplate Abernethyan magnificence of intellect in con- 
nexion with Abernethyan — I was going to say, positive silliness — without con- 
sidering, that in such individuals the brain is disproportionally divided, and that 



Phrenology. 453 

the regulation of such a character should consist in almost painfully exercising 
one faculty, while the indulgence of another was forbidden ? 

Artists almost to a man agree, that they are assisted in the delineation of form 
and the expression of character by the dicta of phrenology. A relation of mine, 
some little time since, made a design from Comus, at the point where the lady 
is subjected to the temptation of the Sensualist. When he had finished it, he ap- 
pealed to me for my opinion as to his success in delineating a sensual, ferocious 
character, in tlje person of the tempter. Upon my expressing myself struck with 
the power of the artist in giving such force to so small a drawing, he replied, 
that his sole directory had been phrenological relations of one part of the head 
with another. It is curious, too, to remark in favour of the phrenologists, that 
all the heads of the antique are formed as if under the direction of their views, 
thus proving that nature and phrenology are the same. 

This science, if properly understood and appreciated, is calculated to humble 
the pride of mam If, with Pharisaic presumption, I feel inclined to thank my 
God that I am not as other men are, I ought first to be satisfied whether my own 
comparative virtue (even allowing its existence) be not the virtue merely of con- 
formation, and whether my neighbour may not have redeeming qualities which 
do not pertain to me. Such a mode of comparing, and judging, and deciding, 
is in full accordance with what we meet in every page of the Christian dispen- 
sation. What mean the forcible expressions, u O wretched man that I am, who 
shall deliver me from this body of sin and death !," " I would do good, but 
evil is present with me !" What mean the strong statements, "one vessel being 
made to honour and one to dishonour V What means the striking appeal to 
Almighty volition, exemplified by the power which the potter has over the clay 
he is about to mould, if not, that some persons are organically more prone to 
virtuous conduct and feelings than others ? But with the disease is presented 
to us the remedy ; and there is no system which can at all impugn, or in any 
way touch the doctrine of moral and religious responsibility. Nay, there is no 
scheme which is one jot better than another in its endeavour to reconcile fate 
and free-will. Here my good-natured reader will pardon me for reiterating a 
remark or two I have elsewhere made. "All men,' 7 I stated, "whether ma- 
terialists or immaterialists, organologists or mentalists, know and feel the fact, 
that there is an indissoluble connexion between free-will and responsibility ; but 
all ought at the same time to know, that every other appeal than to ' the man 
within the breast,' to consciousness and conscience, is worse than nothing. No 
organic or anti-organic speculations or disputations will do. No fearful pre- 
sentiments of the consequences of truth being in any way ascertained, will avail. 
No immaterial philosophy, (immaterial indeed !) forced from a University Pro- 
fessor by virtue of his office, will suffice. No ! It must be by alarming the con- 
science, by resorting to the motives of love and fear, by letting the physiological 
champions fight their own battles, and by wielding other weapons than those 
with which an earthly warfare is waged, that the individual or individuals can 
expect to succeed, who stand as messengers of peace or woe between man and 
his Maker." " All theory," says Dr. Johnson, " is against the freedom of the 
will; all experience for it. We know that we are free, and there's an end of 
the matter' 1 

Even the very terms employed to express goodness, go upon he assumption 
of organic construction. " A good hearted fellow." Why not a good brained 
fellow ? Natural virtue may surely as well come from the brain as any other 
viscus; and the stigma, the unnatural one, would thus be avoided — that a good- 
tempered man is one often of weak intellect. 

Phrenology, indeed, teaches the more comfortable doctrine of greater equality 
in brain power than is usually supposed. For example, I felt humbled almost 
to the dust a day or two ago, at finding myself bungling over a common piece 
of machinery: I, however, raised my head before a mirror, (accidentally, my 
good reader,) and lo ! a large causality presented itself to my view, which 
caused, at any rate, one thing, and that no little one — mental comfort. I recol- 



454 Phrenology. 

lect that young Roscius was a clever performer, but a dull reasoner. I go 
to a conversazione, and find a marvel for calculating numbers a mere ninny 
for any thing else. I remember that Margaret Nicholson, the maniac, was one 
o( the best whist-players in the City of London; and I draw satisfaction 
from all these phrenological tacts, and am prevented from inferring, in my own 
case, general from particular imbecility. 

Education, 1 was about to say, unquestionably may receive much aid and 
direction from Phrenology. Do we destine a boy from his cradle to certain 
situations in life which imply this or that measure, or rather kind of acquire- 
ment, let us study well his exterior conformation as an index of innate power, 
and adapt our plans in conformity with the organization. If it be requisite that 
he should become a proficient in the exact sciences, and we find a cranial con- 
formation adverse to their facile acquisition, we must commence our measures 
cautiously, and continue them dexterously and perseveringly. We must urge 
upon him not to be discouraged by the superior tact and talent of his compeers ; 
but to labour in his vocation under the impression that industry will make up 
for a great deal of natural inability. We must dwell upon the pleasing con- 
sciousness that ere long he will feel, of having done much for himself; and thus 
kindness, and delicacy, and skill, and judgment, on the part of the preceptor, 
will do very much more for the scholar than any plan founded on the persuasion 
that the " glutseus maximus" is the road to the head. 

Let it not be charged upon us that we are enthusiasts ; that we expect modern 
improvements in education will altogether supersede the old methods ; that we 
are for making "royal" or railway roads through the paths that conduct to 
science. Nothing of all this is contemplated by the phrenologist, who, on the 
contrary, anticipates difficulties and obstacles where the new-methods-men find 
nothing but easy and open roads ; and whose principles, even were they correct, 
w T hich they are not, would do away with one of the main benefits of philosophical 
pursuit, viz. that of exercising, and disciplining, and developing the mental 
powers. By one pupil one thing is more easily mastered ; by another, another ; 
but nil sine magno labor e, should be the maxim of every student who is 
ambitious to attain to any eminence in any thing. 

But it is self-education and training that may be especially assisted by the 
science in question. Mr. Combe accidentally met a relation of mine in Edin- 
burgh, and inferred from his phrenological developement so accurately, that trie 
person to whom I allude, who, up to that moment, neither knew nor cared any 
thing about the doctrine, averred that the information, had it been imparted 
to him some ten years before, would have proved invaluable to him. And 
although not under its proper head, I may here farther observe of that individual, 
that he returned from a visit to the north, fully convinced of phrenological rec- 
titude, and, at the same time, a warm admirer of the celebrated Dr. Chalmers; 
a proof this that the principles under notice do not tend to all those irreligious 
conclusions which adversaries have supposed* 

I am, indeed, inclined to the conviction that their moral agency may be made 
of extensive avail if rightly managed. We talk of the influence of habit, and we 
do right — at least, if we do as well as talk ; but what an incitement it must be 
to direct our steps into wholesome habits, when we take into account that by 
doing the contrary, we daily add, not only to deformity of character, but to de- 
formity of head. What individual, who is not quite lost to the cautions and 
cares of sobriety and rectitude, could bear to contemplate, in his looking-glass, 
could endure the perception to his feel of the animal and sensual part of his 
skull growing and swelling out into positive and relative magnitude, in conse- 
quence of habitual practices?— positive, because it is fact, that such altered 
shape comes at length to point out degraded condition ; and relative, because 
the manly, and intellectual, and moral part of* his organization becomes, in the 
same ratio, lessened by a suspension or disuse of the moral and intellectual 
faculties. Doubters may smile at this ; but let them direct their steps to Mr. 
Deville in the Strand, and they may there see the thing pointed out in such a 



Phrenology. 455 

way, that unless their believing organization be entirely obliterated, they will 
return convicted and convinced. 

Now, talking of Deville, I hold, that all the ship's crew which that person ex- 
amined, were culpable in yielding to vicious propensities, not in having them ; 
and that they might, for the most part, have been made good members of society 
by a due inculcation of good principles, and a steady determination to resist the 
force of habit and example. But after a eertain time, and after yielding to bad 
inclinations to a certain extent, the awful sentence comes out with direful appli- 
cation to individual cases — " He that is unrighteous, let him be unrighteous 
still." 

Insanity is one of the tendencies that mental culture, upon a Phrenological 
basis, would be likely to keep under. Almost all madmen possess the organ 
of self-esteem in a very conspicuous measure. Let men look well to this. Let 
the proud be careful to cultivate opposite qualities ; let them be placed in cir- 
cumstances calculated to lower high notions ; let them habitually compare them- 
selves with other men, whose talents are much superior, but whose self-approba- 
tion is much inferior — and I promise such comparers that their own self-esteem 
shall be gradually brought down nearer to the level in which it ought to be : 
and if they have the fear of madhouses before their eyes, this lowering of their 
organization shall go the greatest way, that any preventive power can go, in pre- 
venting their apprehensions from being realized. Madness the increase of men- 
tal power! — it is no such thing! It is the drawing off of power from other 
faculties, and the placing too much upon that which had before got more than 
was sufficient. 

The tenets I have thus ventured to advocate, teach us forcibly the great 
Christian doctrine of charity and forbearance. We are too apt (I here again re- 
peat myself) to make our own condition the measure of others, not taking into 
account the maxim of the Great Teacher — "To pluck out first the mote which is 
in our own eye." There may be want of coincidence in feeling and judgment 
on particular affairs, while the quantum of moral and intellectual strength may 
be alike. Husbands, recollect that your wives' anger, as opposed to your cool- 
ness, may not be an iota worse than the quality on which you complacently feel 
superior. Wives, remember that you must alter your husbands' conformation 
ere you can expect his plans and his conduct to be such as you entirely ap- 
prove. Masters, before you hastily pass condemnation on your servants, consi- 
der that had you been in the circumstances which have moulded their heads and 
marred their characters, you might have been even worse than them. Schoolmas- 
ters, before you think of the birch and the glutaei muscles, look to the principles that 
are still more fundamental than those upon which you have hitherto proceeded. 
Carefully and Craniologically attend to the nice distinctions between dulness 
and idleness, between general cleverness and particular capacity. And you 
wholesome contemners of vice and immorality, ask yourselves whether, organised 
and circumstanced like the wretches you despise, and condemn, and punish, 
you might not have yielded (though nothing could justify such yielding) to the 
same temporary temptations and urgent motives under which the creatures of 
your wrath have unfortunately succumbed ? Lastly, let us all recollect that we 
have a great deal to do, and to suffer, and to submit to, and to war against, 
before we may allow ourselves to apply with any, even the smallest degree of 
propriety, to our own case, the apostolic language, " I have fought the good 

fight." 



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TO MAY. BY LEIGH HUNT. 

May, thou month of rosy beauty, 
Month, when pleasure is a duty ; 
Month of maids that milk the kine, 
Bosom rich, and breath divine ; 
Month of bees, and month of flowers, 
Month of blossom-laden bowers ; 
Month of little hands with daisies, 
Lovers' love, and poets' praises ; 

thou merry month complete, 
May, thy very name is sweet ! 
May was maid in olden times, 
And is still in Scottish rhymes ; 

May r s the blooming hawthorn bough ; 
May 's the month that ? s laughing now. 

1 no sooner w r rite the word, 
Than it seems as though it heard, 
And looks up, and laughs at me, 
Like a sweet face, rosily ; 

Like an actual colour bright, 
Flushing from the paper's white ; 
Like a bride that knows her power, 
Started in a summer bower. 

If the rains that do us wrong, 
Come to keep the winter long, 
And deny us thy sweet looks, 
I can love thee, sweet, in books ; 
Love thee in the poets' pages, 
Where they keep thee green for ages ; 
Love and read thee, as a lover 
Reads his lady's letters over, 
Breathing blessings on the art, 
Which commingles those that part. 

There is May in books for ever ; 
May will part from Spenser never ; 
May ; s in Milton, May 's in Prior, 
May ? s in Chaucer, Thomson, Dyer ; 
May ? s in all the Italian books ; 
She has old and modern nooks, 
Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves 
In happy places they call shelves, 
And will rise, and dress your rooms 
With a drapery thick with blooms. 

Come, ye rains, then, if ye will, 
May 's at home, and with me still : 
But come rather thou, good weather, 
And find us in the fields together. 






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